Problems with Weather (Too many rainy days)

[Charlie Hough]

I am running a fictional Japanese league and managing a team, and there are far too many rain delayed games. I turned off rainouts previously because there had already been two or three early in the season, but the number of rain delays during the months of May and June do not match Japanese historical weather. Yes, June is the start of the rainy season, but typically there are about 10 days of rain during that month. I am seeing far more than this in OOTP.

Here are some numbers. During the month of June, 8 of the my team's last 9 games have featured rain delays, and 15 out of 22 games during the month have been delayed. Half the games in the second half of May were also delayed by rain. During a span of six weeks in May and June, there have been 21 rain delayed games out of 33 played. That's 64% of the total, which seems to be double the number of rainy days based on historical weather during that time period. It's also important to remember that, in real life, a rainy day means that there was measurable precipitation on that day. It doesn't necessarily mean that there was heavy rain or that the precipitation fell during game times.

[niu354]

I'm having similar issues with independent ball. My games don't rain out, but a lot of the other ones are. Most cities in my league have 3-5% rainout in the weather tab.

[Le Grande Orange]

The number of postponements in the real-life N-P-B over the last seven seasons, including rescheduled games, but excluding the 2020 and 2021 seasons. The figure in parentheses is the number of postponements which occurred from the start of the season through the end of April.

2022 = 47 (17)
2019 = 23 (1)
2018 = 57 (5)
2017 = 27 (6)
2016 = 28 (9)

[Charlie Hough]

Yes, those are postponements across the entire league, and I'm referring to the number of rain delays for games involving just one team. The total has now reached 30 rain delays out of 46 games played by my team from mid-May to mid-July. My team's instances would equal 64% of the entire real-life, league-wide total in 2022, and it would already exceed three of the league-wide totals you listed from previous years.

I haven't counted how many delays there have been across the entire league, but a cursory check has shown that it's a similarly high frequency. This would be partly expected since a number of these teams play in the same cities, but I don't know if OOTP is taking that into account. Regardless, the numbers are way too high, and when these delays occur, they sometimes lead to starting pitchers becoming fatigued much sooner, even if they haven't thrown a large number of pitches. So it's affecting game play and results too.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Regardless, the numbers are way too high, and when these delays occur, they sometimes lead to starting pitchers becoming fatigued much sooner, even if they haven't thrown a large number of pitches.

I don't disagree. I think it's been that way since the rain delay feature was added. I remember noticing something was amiss because when there were too many suspended games in the majors as the result of weather, after suspended games were added as a feature. I suspect the problems are related.

I'd post rain delay info if I had it; all I have is postponement data.

I do have several seasons' worth of box scores for the majors and minors, but in text form exported from the websites, so they'd have to be gone through one by one to extract any rain delay data.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I don't disagree. I think it's been that way since the rain delay feature was added.

This is the first time I've ever encountered a problem with the rain delay feature, but this is also the first time I've ever run a Japanese league since it was added. My league only has 120 games per season, so this is happening with a smaller schedule than real life. The rain delay feature seems to work fine for North America, but it is clearly going to the extreme with the weather data for Japan.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

The rain delay feature seems to work fine for North America . . .

Do we really know that for sure, though? Without actual real-life data to compare against OOTP, it's an assumption or going by feeling.

I'm not sure postponement rates are correct. And suspended games were way too common in the majors a few OOTP versions ago.

Selected 2022 postponement rates for comparison:

MLB, 1.94% (excluding games postponed by the lockout)
INT, 4.12%
PCL, 1.84%
EAS, 4.52%
SOU, 5.91%
TEX, 2.84%

[niu354]

Is it only Japan?

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Do we really know that for sure, though? Without actual real-life data to compare against OOTP, it's an assumption or going by feeling.

It depends on your definition of working fine. What I mean by that term is that I have never seen more than a few rain delays and a couple of game cancellations for my team in an entire 162-game MLB season in OOTP. That seems reasonable to me and is what I would expect based on decades of seeing teams play through entire seasons. The stats you posted reinforce that.

But this is definitely not the case with Japan, where rain delayed games in OOTP continue to happen at a rate that is so extreme that you don't even need baseball postponement stats for comparison. It's more than double the frequency of actual days with precipitation in these locations in Japan, and days with precipitation don't equate to rain delays or cancellations, as I mentioned earlier. First you need to get the actual weather correct, and then you need to figure out how frequent the delays and cancellations should be within those conditions.

As for whether this is limited to Japan or not, I can't say. I created a KBO league for some testing, but right now I'm focused on my Japanese fictional league, so maybe some others can test the weather in other locations and especially those with significant rainy seasons during the typical months of a baseball season there.

[niu354]

I'm providing screenshots of all ten Pioneer League schedules (5 this post, 5 next). I regenerated the schedule in the offseason, so every team has built-in days off on the 10th and 23rd. I play my Ogden Raptors games out, and there have been zero rainouts this season. Notice, by comparison, the insane number of rainouts the other teams are experiencing.

[niu354]

Not only do the blank dates (except 10th and 23rd) signify a rainout, but it many cases it signifies an entire doubleheader (both legs) was rained out.

[Le Grande Orange]

To provide some real-world data for comparison, in the 2022 season, the Pioneer League had 26 postponements out of 498 intended regular season games (this number includes rescheduled games), which is a 5.2% postponement rate. That's roughly one game in twenty. Five of the postponed games were not made up.

By month, it was four in May, seven in June, eight in July, four in August, and three in September.

[Lukas Berger]

I guess there may be a bug somewhere in the calculations here, or possibly in the raw data itself.

We'll add this to the list of stuff to take a look at.

[Le Grande Orange]

Regarding games delayed by rain (rather than postponed), here is some real-world data extracted from the actual league box scores:

MLB 2018 = 140 delayed games out of 2,430 regular season games played (5.76%, or about 1 in 17 games)
MLB 2019 = 143 delayed games out of 2,428 regular season games played (5.89%, or about 1 in 17 games)
MLB 2022 = 112 delayed games out of 2,430 regular season games played (4.61%, or about 1 in 22 games)

International League (AAA) 2018 = 94 delayed games out of 974 games played (9.65%, or about 1 in 10 games)


Length of rain delays in 2018 MLB season:

Minimum: 10 minutes
Maximum: 335 minutes
Average: 68.4 minutes
Median: 55.0 minutes
Standard Deviation: 50.5 minutes

56 games had delays of 10–44 minutes
32 games had delays of 45–78 minutes
30 games had delays of 79–112 minutes
12 games had delays of 113–146 minutes
06 games had delays of 147–180 minutes
01 game had a delay of 181–214 minutes
01 game had a delay of 215–248 minutes
00 games had delays of 249–282 minutes
00 games had delays of 283–316 minutes
01 game had a delay of 317–350 minutes


I'm missing some box scores for the MLB 2021 season, so that will have wait. More rain delay data for the minor leagues for the 2018, 2019, and 2022 seasons can also be provided.

[Ktulu]

Has anyone looked at the weather.txt file and compared it to the same file in 23?

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

Has anyone looked at the weather.txt file and compared it to the same file in 23?

Is that still a thing? Or is everything in the weather.dat file? When I search my computer for "weather.txt" it comes up empty, and I have OOTP 22, 23, and 24 installed.

[Carplos]

Yeah, weather.txt should still be in your database folder.

[Ktulu]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Is that still a thing? Or is everything in the weather.dat file? When I search my computer for "weather.txt" it comes up empty, and I have OOTP 22, 23, and 24 installed.

The game creates the .dat files at league creation based on the files in the database folder.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

The game creates the .dat files at league creation based on the files in the database folder.

Thanks, just found it in the database file. Wonder why windows doesn't find it when I do a search? Guess it doesn't matter...

[Charlie Hough]

I have checked my weather.txt file as well as the weather for each ballpark in my fictional Japanese league. The percentages match between the file and the ballparks, but OOTP is not applying those numbers. It is inducing a far higher percentage of games with rain delays than what these database numbers say the average chance of rain should be.

According to the weather.txt file and the ballpark data for Hiroshima, there is supposed to be a 10% average chance of precipitation in May and a 17% average chance of precipitation in June. But 65% of games played in Hiroshima had rain delays during a six-week period between those two months.

Also, I'll offer up a reminder that a chance of precipitation doesn't necessarily mean that it will occur during a game. Ultimately, even if there is rain on a given day, there should still be a determination of whether it occurs during the hours when a game is being played. I don't know if the weather.txt percentages have already accounted for that or not.